Cellular communications networks include tens to hundreds of base stations installed at various locations. Two conventional installations are illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2. Specifically, FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional tower-top mounted installation 10 of a base station. As illustrated, the base station includes a Remote Radio Equipment (RRE) 12 connected to a Radio Equipment Controller (REC) 14. The RRE 12 is mounted at a top of a tower 16 and located between 0 to 20 kilometers (km) from the REC 14. The RRE 12 transmits downlink radio signals and receives uplink radio signals from wireless devices, such as a wireless device (WD) 18, located within a coverage area of the RRE 12. The coverage area of the RRE 12 may be a cell served by the base station or a sector of a cell served by the base station. In this example, the base station is a macro or high power base station where the coverage area of the RRE 12 extends from 0 to 10 km from the tower 16. FIG. 2 illustrates a conventional roof-top mounted installation 20 of the base station. In this example, the base station includes two RREs 12 connected to the REC 14. However, in the roof-top mounted installation 20, the RREs 12 are mounted at the top of a building 22, and the REC 14 is located in the basement or cellar of the building 22.
One issue with conventional base station installations such as those of FIGS. 1 and 2 is that the RRE(s) 12 is(are) difficult to reach when maintenance is needed. More specifically, in tower-top mounted installations, the RRE(s) 12 is(are) located at the top of the tower 16 at a height that is typically in the range of 20 to 100 meters (m). As such, when maintenance or field support personnel need to connect to the RRE(s) 12 to perform maintenance operations, the personnel may need to arrange access to the property on which the tower 16 is located and must then climb the tower 16. This is of course time consuming and expensive and creates a significant amount of risk of physical injury to the personnel and potential liability of the cellular communications network operator. Similarly, in roof-top mounted installations, the RRE(s) 12 is(are) located at the top of the building 22. As such, when maintenance or field personnel need to connect to the RRE(s) 12 to perform maintenance operations, the personnel must typically arrange access to the roof-top of the building 22 and potentially climb a mast mounted to the roof-top of the building 22. Again, this is of course time consuming and expensive and creates a significant amount of risk of physical injury to the personnel and potential liability of the cellular communications network operator. As such, there is a need for systems and methods that provide easy and efficient access to RREs for maintenance and field support personnel.
Another issue that arises with respect to installation of base stations relates to subsequent location and identification of RREs. More specifically, mobile data traffic is exploding at a 60% rate of increase every year. In order to meet this demand, small, or low power, base stations (e.g., micro and pico base stations) can be used, particularly in areas with very dense usage. It is desirable to scatter large numbers of small base stations in order to provide high data rates to a large number of users. As an example, FIG. 3 illustrates a number of small base stations, where each small base station includes three RREs (sRREs) 24 each serving a different sector 26 of a cell 28 served by the small base station. When these small base stations are scattered and used in large numbers, it is difficult to manage the locations and identities of the sRREs 24 of the small base stations. For instance, in an extreme case, the sRREs 24 for the small base stations are deployed in a temporary ad-hoc network to provide increased capacity for, as an example, a sporting event or a conference. As illustrated in FIG. 4, in a typical installation, each sRRE 24 includes a remote radio unit 30 and an antenna 32 mounted on a pole 34, or mast.
During network planning and inventory, it is necessary to associate particular sRREs 24 with corresponding planned physical locations for the sRREs 24. However, when installing the sRREs 24, particularly for a temporary ad-hoc network, the physical locations at which the sRREs 24 are actually installed, or deployed, may not match the planned physical locations for the sRREs 24. Similarly, the actual sRRE 24 deployed at a physical location may not match the sRRE 24 planned for that physical location. This may occur due to, for example, human error and/or on-site adjustments made by field support personnel. Thereafter, when problems arise, the maintenance or field support personnel may not be able to locate and identify a particular sRRE 24 to perform corrective action in a timely manner. Further, even when the physical location of an sRRE 24 is found, multiple sRREs 24 are oftentimes installed at the same physical location in order to cover different sectors of the same cell 28, in which case the maintenance or field support personnel cannot easily identify the particular sRRE 24 of interest. As such, there is also a need for systems and methods that enable easy and accurate location and identification of deployed sRREs.
In addition to the issues noted above, a typical large North American cellular network operator has to manage thousands of base stations in the cellular communications network. This is accomplished using network management platforms or systems, which are usually located in centers remote from the radios of the base stations. Each network management platform could control as many as 500 radio base stations, where each base station includes an REC connected to multiple antenna mounted RREs. Typically, there are twelve RREs per base station. When a base station experiences a sudden degradation in radio network performance, it is essential that the network operator responsible for this base station quickly identifies the source of the problem. Currently, the network operator is able to retrieve status information from RREs via corresponding landline communication cables that connect the REC and the RREs.
Remote status checking of the RREs over the landline communication cables is possible if the cable connections are good and the RREs are operational. Otherwise, a field crew is dispatched to the base station site to physically check each RRE individually. Until this physical inspection is complete, the network operator cannot determine the root cause of the problem. In addition, it is costly to dispatch the field crew personnel, who are typically independent contractors rather than employees of an owner of the cellular communications network, to service the RREs. Further, even after dispatch, the field crew personnel often misdiagnose the issue or are incentivized to unnecessarily replace RREs. As such, there is a need for systems and methods that enable a network operator to remotely perform first-level debugging of an RRE before dispatching field support personnel.